


All That Counts

by Livrin



Category: Kuroko no Basuke | Kuroko's Basketball
Genre: Angst, Friends With Benefits, M/M, Unhealthy Relationships
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-31
Updated: 2017-01-31
Packaged: 2018-09-21 02:32:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,474
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9527906
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Livrin/pseuds/Livrin
Summary: Literatures and cinemas paved the way into establishing notion of how the right people walked right into your life.They never quite prepared you for when the wrong people did.Aomine was the sort of person who happened into people’s lives. Not quite mindful of others’ lives to ever consider walking in or even waltzing in.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [takaraikarin](https://archiveofourown.org/users/takaraikarin/gifts).



 Written in a prompt challenge with [Takarai Karin](http://archiveofourown.org/users/takaraikarin/pseuds/takaraikarin). This is for her since it's her pairing and she'll curse my laptop if I ever mentioned Aomine/Kuroko to her face.

 

 

 

 

>  
> 
> I remember your collarbone, forming the tiniest
> 
> satellite dish in the universe, your smile
> 
> as the place where parallel lines inevitably crossed.
> 
> Now dinosaurs freeze to death on your shoulder.
> 
> I remember your eyes: fifty attack dogs on a single leash
> 
>   ** _Jeffrey McDaniel - Letter to the Woman Who Stopped Writing Me Back_ **

 

 

Literatures and cinemas paved the way into establishing notion of how the right people walked right into your life.

 

They never quite prepared you for when the wrong people did.

 

Aomine was the sort of person who _happened_ into people’s lives. Not quite mindful of others’ lives to ever consider walking in or even waltzing in.

 

The best offense was the best defense, after all.

 

Some lives were rolling doors spinning over and over to admit one person after another.

 

Some people _were_ the rolling doors.

 

And people like _Kiseki no Sedai_ were built to charge through it.

 

Often times the constant fluidity will atrophy into sluggish boredom. That was why people like Kagami and Kuroko were such welcome changes in their lives, particularly Aomine’s.

 

Their presence a challenge as much as milestone in constant linear line that could be a bit mundane otherwise.

 

One big chapter heavy with emotion, overwrought with exhausting plotlines. Or, neat sub- chapters, particular, and structured in its coherency.

 

Sakurai was the footnote etched underneath it all.

 

Similar pale limbs not unlike the ones belonging to someone with light blue hair. The wrong set of limbs much more imprinted with tactile sense at the foremost of Aomine’s mind.

 

_‘Close your eyes and tell the two of us apart.’_

 

_‘You trying to be funny? It’s not even a challenge.’_

 

_‘No, I guess, it never is. Not for all the wrong reasons.’_

 

Ambition as twisting as his own, competitive streak a mile wide.

 

_‘This space is much too big for the two of us.’_

 

_‘You and me. Or you and him?’_

 

Nobody in this club ever pulled any punches. A bunch of egotists welded together with similar purpose.

 

But in this sterile arrangement, there was one person who has been shadowboxing one-sidedly and would go down swinging until the last count.

 

\+   +   +

 

Sakurai’s life was a life that people imagined themselves happening into. Knocking down its door, bearing something, intend to mean some kind of change upon it. When it was quite the exact opposite.

 

He happened into their lives.

 

He was the kind of a man who would bring you a glass of water, helpfully, unassuming and open face, when you rapped on his door at 2 AM saying you needed a drink.

 

He was quite charming in his gullibility.

 

Perhaps that was why he could never escape from the likes of Aomine.

 

They clung onto people like Sakurai with desperate air of vulgarists who only know of destroying all the good things in their lives.

 

Since Winter Cup, Aomine has been remembering things in fragments and he’s been chasing pieces of them strung together on a string.

 

There was a concave slope in his head filled with meetings and separations spelled backward.

 

_Oi, Satsuki, where’s Tetsu? ...What do you mean he’s not coming?? --_

 

                    [_what’s with the look, Tetsu?_](http://31.media.tumblr.com/9f4f681598a71eb55fff9e8fd1399f74/tumblr_mr3diqtO3W1qe4nqzo1_500.png) _Loosen up, we’re only trying to spice things up; this is such a boring no good losers to play with anyway --_

 

_you’re getting there, Tetsu! That’s it, try it one more time, but this time try not to bend your elbow too much --_

 

_Oh, hey, hello, Akashi said we should practice together. Want to be my partner? I’m Aomine by the way --_

 

The only things he was ever good at were basketball and letting good things go.

 

Recognizing them a little too late, fighting for it a little too weak.

 

He bent down and picked up his bag, saying goodbye to Satsuki. The thought of scorching hot food and messy bed were the only things occupying his mind.

 

Someone got a hold of his arm and turned him around.

 

‘You forget about tonight?’

 

Sober brown eyes, looking up at him, and it was such a punch in the gut to be hit with open accusation in it. Vastly jarring to the barely veiled indifference in Tetsu’s ones.

 

‘Tonight? Ahh..the dinner?’, Aomine's hand palmed the other’s jaw, he could feel the shifting of muscles and bones underneath the skin. The tightening of it all and the hollow space just above the Adam’s apple. Aomine traced the skin stretched taut there back and forth absentmindedly.

 

‘Do we have to go out? Can’t we just stay inside and get a take away instead? I’m kinda beat. Don’t know what’s gotten into Satsuki, we just finished Winter Cup anyway,’ he complained and slung his hand around the shorter guy, ‘come on, walk with me, man. Damn, I’d kill for a hotpot now, Tetsu.’

 

There was nothing that could describe the slow horrible realization of turning around and watching in Sakurai’s widened betrayed eyes that yes, he had said the very wrong thing that has been existing there, unnamed, untouched, between them since the first time he took the guy home.

 

Since this interaction they shared had morphed into something half ugly and half as comforting as his old threadbare long sleeved shirt he often wore during a particular cold day.

 

And it was an even more wretched feeling for Aomine to see the gradual shifting from bitter anger into open bleakness in the other’s eyes. Both of Sakurai’s hands hang limply on his sides of the body, but something prevented Aomine to reach out his hand and made skin contact. The way Sakurai hold himself together was almost as if he’ll disintegrate the way a smashed mirror would with the slightest touch.

 

‘Ryou--’

 

‘I’ve been trying to come up with something. But, as always, you’ve made the decision for me,’ a hoarse laugh jagged like a broken beer bottle dragged out from Sakurai’s throat, Aomine’s eyes followed the movement of Sakurai’s adam’s apple bobbing with the frightful stare of a drowned man with busted life jacket, ‘I always thought it’s his presence I should fight. And I thought, with you being here with me, and him there with Kagami, things will fall into place eventually. What I never realized was that, it was never his presence that I should fight to be in this. It’s you and him. And there’s no way I could win this when I have to come up against you. So. This is it, I guess.’

 

The way Sakurai’s head tilted a little forward, chin tucked into his neck, reminded Aomine of a small bird easily crushed in a too tight grip of an overexcited youth.

 

Literatures and cinemas paved the way into establishing notion of how the right people walked right into your life.

 

They never quite elaborated on how to deal when the same people walked out of it.

 

‘They told us to be ourselves. Well, I am myself, but that’s never quite good enough for you.’

 

There was an awareness telegraphing itself lightning quick under the layer of Aomine’s skin, as urgent as the firing of an air raid siren in a dusky morning, for him to make a grab and stop the body in front of him from leaving.

 

Because this time, this time he might have just made another irreparable damage to another heart, again, and goddammit why did he have to fuck up every single thing that ever meant anything in his life, he just didn’t get it.

 

The only thing that stopped him dead was the warning in Sakurai’s eyes before he turned to leave.

 

‘Don’t.’ A harsh whisper. ‘You don’t get to say sorry or pretend like you care for me from here on out.’

 

_Your name on the_

_tag. Your name on everything. Here is_

_the body that loved you. Here is the_

_heart, bloodied and wanting. Here are_

_those drunk voice mails, the sober texts._

_Here is your promise of staying. Here_

_is the lonely hum in my brain where your_

_name used to be. Here is my spine. Here_

_is all the hollow. Here is all the longing. Here_

_is the heavy tongue, the scratchy vocal_

_chords. Here are all of the I love you ’s._

_Here is the shocking wreck of it all. Here is_

_how you were closer to me than my bones,_

_my skin. Here is the quiet city, your empty_

_side of the bed. Here is the empty. Here is not_

_knowing whether you loved me or not. Here is_

_the poem that can’t save us. Here._

_**Kristina H - On Missing You** _

 

  
  
**End**

 

 

 **A/N :** Credits goes to both poets (Kristina H and  Jeffrey McDaniel)for their amazing works that prompted this little piece.


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